Why does the United States go to war?

America has a long tradition of justifying war as the defense of democracy. The War on Terror was waged to protect the West from the dangers of Islamists. The US soldiers stationed in over 800 locations across the world are meant to be the righteous arbiters of justice. Against this background, Andrew Cockburn brilliantly dissects the true intentions behind Washington’s martial appetites.

The American war machine can only be understood in terms of the private passions and interests of those who control it—principally a passionate interest in money. Thus, as Cockburn witheringly reports, Washington expanded NATO to satisfy an arms manufacturer’s urgent financial requirements; the US Navy’s Pacific fleet deployments were for years dictated by a corrupt contractor who bribed high-ranking officers with cash and prostitutes; senior Marine commanders agreed to a troop surge in Afghanistan in 2017 for budgetary reasons.

Based on years of wide-ranging research, Cockburn lays bare the ugly reality of the largest military machine in history: as profoundly squalid as it is terrifyingly deadly.

Andrew Cockburn is the Washington Editor of Harper’s magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including including Rumsfeld, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War, and Kill Chain: Drones and the Rise of High-Tech Assassins. He has written for, among others, the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, National Geographic, and the London Review of Books.